This Mother’s Day will be my first without my mom, who died last June. So, if your Mom is still alive, I can’t stress enough how important it is to make her feel special while you still have the chance. You’ll have the rest of your life to regret it if you don’t. Forget all the wrongs she may have done to you, just for one day, and realize she is the only mom you’ll ever have. No one will ever love you the way she does.

OK, enough preaching for now. The rest of this post is going to be sort of a “Shit My Dad Says” – except I’m providing some beloved quotes from my late mom. She was very sarcastic, but very witty:

“You think everybody’s gay. Everybody can’t be gay. But he is a phony.”

–My mom, responding to my assertion that Tom Cruise is gay.

“You have the guts, the gall, the nerve, the audacity to talk to me like that?”

–This is what my mother would say when my sisters and I were disrespectful to her, even when we were little kids. Needless to say, we all have really good vocabularies.

“Please don’t turn around. Please don’t turn around.”

–A plea she whispered to Harvey Keitel’s naked backsideÂ as we watched the movie “The Piano” in a crowded movie theater.Â

“I understand how easy it is toÂ become a crack addict. That’s how I feel about chocolate. I have to be really careful, or I’ll eatÂ a whole bag of chocolate chips.”

–Mom, being completely serious about her “addiction” to chocolate.

Â “Oh, please. Give me a break. I look like Johnny Cash.”

–What my mother would say if you complemented her appearance while she was wearing the color black.